Winning Without Losing Series: Efficiency Boosters
Winning Without Losing, the CMI award-winning book as “the best book for New Managers,” explains 66 strategies on how to be successful in business, without neglecting your personal life. Martin Bjergegaard and Jordan Milne interviewed a variety of successful entrepreneurs, and through their search they found that the key to a happy and successful life, is a healthy work life balance.
Every Saturday for the next 7 weeks, we will be sharing unique strategies that aim to inspire how you can achieve success without sacrifice.
This week, the selected strategy is chosen from Winning Without Losing‘s “Efficiency Boosters” section.
Efficiency Booster #12: Don’t try too hard
Have you ever noticed how the most successful people seem far more relaxed than the rest of us, even though in theory they should be far more stressed? How the president exudes a calm and collected demeanour, while all his helpers look hectic?
This was the case, almost universally, when we interviewed our role models. None of them seemed stressed despite running large, successful businesses or disruptive start-ups.
One possible explanation for their impressively calm demeanour could be that since they have already achieved so much they can now rest a little on their laurels. In reality, however, the causality points the other way: they have come so far, exactly because they possess the skill of being relaxed in the midst of hectic activity.
It may seem unnatural that the road to success should be paved with relaxation. I know that for me this was initially a very difficult notion to accept. I thought about all the times I had done a good job by pushing myself.
It seems like we all have been conditioned to believe that the harder we push ourselves, the more successful we will be. However, sometimes this pushing will impair your skills, actually hurting your success.
My mindset changed only when martial arts champion, bestselling author and meditation teacher Henning Daverne asked me to think of the situations when I had done my absolute best. My true personal top performances. I then realised that there is a limit to what I can achieve by pushing myself. The performances I’m most proud of have all happened in a state of flow and ease, at the point where every- thing comes together and I perform well above my normal level. That’s what Henning calls effortless drive, and he knows what he’s talking about.
Henning’s own breakthrough as a fighter came when he himself learned how to relax. It was in 1989, at a rally in Sweden. He was up against a strong fighter, a real ox. The two young men battled and struggled, crashed together and spent enormous amounts of energy on their efforts to defeat each other. Henning realised that he couldn’t win by sheer muscle alone, and changed his strategy.
He began to relax, to breathe deeply, and to distance himself from his situation and his opponent. He observed it all calmly, both from inside and above. And then bang, he landed a perfect blow. Because all his effort had been replaced with presence and tranquillity, it became easy for Henning to respond intuitively, with- out hesitation and without having to push himself. The battle was won, and Henning continued to use the principle to become one of the most highly ranked Wing Tsun practitioners in Europe.
Do you know the salesman who’s so eager to get the contract that the whole sale crumbles between his tightly clenched fingers? or the young consultant who so desperately wants to do well that she turns the entire department against her?
Sometimes trying too hard can be detrimental to your personal success. Relaxing, while being in the moment can help you gain more personal focus.
In caricatured form it is easy to laugh at or pity these unfortunate people, but the reality is that, now and then, we are all that per- son. We are trying so hard to achieve a result that we fail.
Through effortless drive you not only get better results, but you also wear yourself down less in the process. An extra benefit is that the transition from one activity to another becomes much easier when you are less uptight.
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